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Agreed, I'm with you on popularizing dollar coins. Our $1 banknote is another needlessly overproduced piece of currency. Dollar coins last a lot longer and are more environmentally sustainable because they do not need to be produced as often. The problem is, the $1 bill is so popular that it will be very hard to take it out of the circulation whereas the penny is not. That's why we need to start small and get rid of the penny first.
Dollar bills are popular because people are creatures of habit. It is actually very easy to get people to change over. Simply stop producing dollar bills, and produce only dollar coins. In about a year the problem had taken care of itself.
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BTW, Eisenhowers and Kennedy half dollars are much larger than quarters while Sacagawea and Presidential dollar coins are gold colored. They all look nothing like quarters.
Eisenhower, Kennedy and presidential coins were never minted in large enough numbers to be practical currency. The Sacajawea was a tremendous improvement over the Susan B, but still felt physically like a quarter, so it was difficult to tell by feel when rummaging through a pocket or pouch of coins.
If you get rid of the penny then that only applies to cash transactions, or to all transactions?
You could do it either way, but Canada has been very successful by having the cash transactions rounded to the nearest 0.05, with credit transactions staying at 0.01.
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How long do people have, to turn in their pennies for "credits"? Where do they bring them?
Depends on what the legislature decides of course. It seems to me a year to redeem your pennies is reasonable. We wouldn’t need to use “credits” of any type, we already have functional alternatives called nickels, dimes and quarters. For location, how about any bank, or spend them at a retail store? Does it even matter? I lost about 14 cents when Canada abolished the penny, because I had that many Canadian pennies on hand and did not get to Canada to spend them. I seem to have weathered that financial crisis just fine.
I currently have a few jars of pennies on hand. Maybe $10-$15 worth. I have them because I haven’t spent them, or been bothered to take them to a bank, or give them away. For all practical purposes, I might as well throw them away for the good they are doing me. If the USA got rid of the penny tomorrow, I would not be financially harmed.
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Does that mean all those hoarded copper pennies can be melted down? Did you know that it's illegal to melt down copper pennies? (Melting silver coins is legal) What would that do to the price of copper?
Who cares? It isn’t as if there are cops monitoring and prosecuting Penny melters. That law could be changed. Given the amount of copper that is used for industrial purposes, even if every copper penny currently in existence came on the metals market at once, I bet the cost of copper wouldn’t fluctuate by more thatan a percent or two for a few days.
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If I buy something online that costs $100.07 do I pay that price or $100.05? Obviously if I pay cash in person I can't pay $100.07 without pennies.
If you pay with cash, you pay $100.05. If we adopt the Canadian method, if you pay with credit you pay $100.07. If that difference factors into your choice of payment method, you can choose accordingly.
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How much will it cost merchants to reprogram their cash registers to round everything (after sales tax) to the nearest $0.05?
Not much. Most merchants have support contracts with vendors to address things like this. The programming is fairly easy, if the total is $100.07 and the tender type is cash, the programming would be to accept $100.05 with a 0.02 markdown. Similarly, if the total was $100.08 with cash as a tender type, the programming accords $100.10 including a $0.02 markup.
There are far more complicated programming tasks taken on every year.
In regards to what Canadians did with pennies after we got rid of them.
They of course didn't just disappear overnight. What happened was that vendors accepted pennies up to a certain time, but did not give pennies back in change after rounding up or down. Vendors then took their pennies to the banks. Eventually there were very few pennies in circulation. Almost all vendors do not accept pennies today, however it is up to the vendor.
I I had a jar of pennies I could take it to the bank, but it's up to the bank if they accept them.
I haven't heard of anyone complaining that they couldn't get rid of their pennies.
As for cash registers, no reprogramming needed. The sales tax is a percentage of the total bill BEFORE rounding up or down.
The cash register will give the price to the penny. There is no separate rounding button for cash, just the regular cash button. So when my bill is $4.99 and I pay cash I give them 5 dollars. If it's $4.51 they get $4.50.
Not to say some large companies may have programmed the cash registers to note if the cash transaction was rounded up or down, all in the background. Mum and Pop shops...probably don't.
You could do it either way, but Canada has been very successful by having the cash transactions rounded to the nearest 0.05, with credit transactions staying at 0.01.
Depends on what the legislature decides of course. It seems to me a year to redeem your pennies is reasonable. We wouldn’t need to use “credits” of any type, we already have functional alternatives called nickels, dimes and quarters. For location, how about any bank, or spend them at a retail store? Does it even matter? I lost about 14 cents when Canada abolished the penny, because I had that many Canadian pennies on hand and did not get to Canada to spend them. I seem to have weathered that financial crisis just fine.
Pennies would continue to be legal tender indefinitely. They would simply be removed from circulation. If you have one, you can still redeem a $500 or $1,000 bill. Likewise you can still redeem half cent, 2 cent and 3 cent coins, and you will continue to be able to redeem pennies. But you'd better stock pile them now. Because if they are removed from circulation, you are not going to be seeing many of them.
BUT........ if we did away with the penny, I'd expect FIVE thoughts for my Nickel!
Come to U.K. and think as many thoughts as you wish!
“The UK Treasury has reprieved 1 penny and 2 pence coins, saying they will continue to be used "for years to come". The copper coins were theoretically under threat when Chancellor Philip Hammond consulted on the current mix of coins and banknotes in circulation.”
2 May 2019
If the register total is 2.44 it is rounded down to 2.40. Save 4 cents.
If it is 2.46 then it is rounded up to 2.50. Lose 4 cents.
That's after sales tax.
All pennies were to be rolled up and taken to banks to exchange for bills or other coins.
In Canada we also got rid of the $1 and $2 bill and replaced with coins; the loonie and the toonie (slang)
The loonie was named because there is a bird called a loon swimming on a lake pictured on it. Toonie, well, it is two loonies. lol
Recently some bills that showed political figures were changed to show Canadian heroes of things like women's suffrage,explorers, artists, inventors and humanitarians. Bills are now made of polymers instead of paper which is very difficult to forge and allows for more creative security features. And they are waterproof.
The Loonie is a $1 dollar coin. The Toonie is the the $2 dollar coin. They are bigger than a quarter and easily identifiable since the Loonie is ONE metal, and the Toonie is TWO types of metal.
I do love the look of the Toonie - striking!
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